The United States and China are sparring over the wording of a leaders' statement on trade that will be a centerpiece of President Donald Trump's debut trip to Asia next week.

Caught in the middle is Vietnam, which had its hopes of becoming a free trade partner with the U.S. via the TPP dashed when Trump withdrew from the pact on his third day in office.

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Vietnam is hosting this year's annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders summit on Nov 11-12. That means it's primarily up to Hanoi to massage differences over wording in the final leaders' statement.

Last year, then-President Barack Obama, Chinese President Xi Jinping and leaders of the 19 other members of APEC reaffirmed the group's long-standing commitment to "free and open trade."

This year, the United States wants to tweak the language to say "free and fair trade," Alan Bollard, executive director of the APEC secretariat, told POLITICO in a phone interview.

That would be in line with the Trump administration's desire to aggressively use trade remedy measures to keep out what it thinks are unfairly traded imports from China and other suppliers.

That's just of several "sensitive" areas that the United States wants to change in the declaration, Bollard said.

"There's some areas where China has responded and said, 'We don't want to change. We think it's going in the right direction,'" Bollard said.

"And in some cases, some other economies have responded as well," he added. "Vietnam, as chair of all these working groups, has had quite a difficult job pulling all those things together, getting agreement on things. As of a week ago, we didn't have complete agreement."

By far, the biggest fuss is over "fair" versus "open" trade.

"It's just another adjective, but you'll understand there's quite a bit behind that," Bollard said. Meanwhile, the final leaders' statement should continue to embrace the goal of creating a "Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific," despite the Trump administration's aversion to regional deals, Bollard said.

Three years ago, APEC members agreed on the "Beijing Roadmap" for advancing the initiative, although there's no deadline for completing the FTAAP and no formal negotiations are underway.

Trade ministers and possibly leaders of the 11 countries still left in the TPP are expected to meet on the sidelines of the APEC meeting to discuss how to advance the agreement without the United States.

Japan is leading that effort, and has said it wants to create space for Washington to rejoin the deal if it changes its mind. However, countries are likely to drop some provisions they only accepted in exchange for getting increased access to the U.S. market.

Another initiative involving China, India and 14 other countries called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is probably still one to two years from being completed, Bollard said.

It won't be as ambitious as TPP in terms of opening markets and setting rules for trade, but it would be geopolitically significant because of India and China's participation, he said.